Coach Yourself Thin

Coach Yourself Thin – Five Steps to Retrain Your Mind, Reclaim Your Power, and Lose the Weight For Good is a collaborative weight loss management guide from professional weight loss coaches Greg Hottinger, MPH, RD and Michael Scholtz, MA. After creating popular online sites like the Biggest Loser Club and Flat Belly Diet Online, the authors have compiled success stories and lessons learned in their 15 years of experience in to a book they hope will help people “look inward” and gain confidence in their ability to control their own weight loss destiny.

The book is divided in to six chapters beginning with a look back at how industrialization and modern convenience has led to weight gain in this country. There is a chapter on the Seven Undermining Obstacles to Weight Loss including weight fixation, feelings of unworthiness, the willpower myth and selective accountability. The Five Stepping Stones to Change includes advice on how to get where you’re going on your weight loss journey. “Without a detailed road map of where you want to go, you may try to get somewhere, only to end up right back where you started,” it says in the book.

The book also includes two chapters on eating and exercise guidelines with meal plans, and finally, Discovering Your Positive Inner Coach which encourages the reader to create their own “wellness vision” and “set goals toward lasting weight loss and lifestyle change.”

Reader may have to wade through too many details to find something that applies to them

Not a complete guide in regard to nutrition; The reader may need accompanying material

DIET and NUTRITION

Coach Yourself Thin provides a chapter specifically geared toward nutrition philosophy, eating plan structure and meal plans. It begins with an explanation about processed foods or even so-called “diet food” can still be unhealthy. The authors give advice about how to stay in control even when eating out at restaurants, provide their take on weight loss supplements (spoiler alert – they don’t recommend them), describe how to eat healthy when you’re short on time, and break down the natural sweetener versus artificial sweetener debate.

Finally, there is a guide to help men and women calculate their optimal daily caloric intake based on age, weight and activity level. Once the reader finds his/her range, the book provides a breakdown of how those calories can be spread out evenly throughout the day including breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. For those who crave simplicity they also include daily meal plans with calorie counts so the reader can simply look under the breakfast category, choose the number of calories they want to spend or can afford to spend, and then pick from the balanced meals listed.

A 230 calorie breakfast might look like this:

½ cup oatmeal, cooked

1 tsp brown sugar

½ cup milk

¼ cup nonfat cottage cheese

2 canned peach halves

Cup tea or coffee

EXERCISE

Chapter 5 covers the Coach Yourself Thin's healthy exercise guidelines. It begins with the authors' “Four simple guidelines that we believe to be the basis of success,” including:

Form Follows Function – Which is the idea that you get out of exercise what you put in to it.

The chapter on exercise, though not as friendly as the nutrition chapter, does give helpful information about calculating your BMI (body mass index) explains cardio versus strength training regimens and provides ideas for sample workouts through each phase of your weight loss journey.

CONCLUSION

Coach Yourself Thin – Five Steps to Retrain Your Mind, Reclaim Your Power and Lose the Weight for Good is written from the perspective of two professional weight loss coaches. The theme of body/mind/spirit resonates through the book. The authors want their readers to be empowered when they finish the last chapter so there is an emphasis on understanding individual eating habits, envisioning goals and how to handle the everyday obstacles that can wreak havoc with healthy eating. This is a weight loss guide but it’s also a lifestyle guide. Although the meal plans are handy to copy and stick on the fridge, and the fitness advice is solid, impatient readers may grow weary wading through so many “real life experiences” and “background information” to get there.

User Feedback

(Page 2 of 2, 21 total comments)

Alison Kuusisto

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A great tool for breaking free of All-or-Nothing thinking and creating an 80/20 approach. You won't find any quick fixes in Coach Yourself Thin because... drum roll... they don't work! If you're looking for a guide to help you make the "thinking shifts" so you can lose weight and keep it off, this is it. Five stars!

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